Deborah Retherford
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Deborah Retherford is the Seat A representative on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District School Board. Retherford won re-election to Seat A after defeating write-in candidate Sacha Pettitt in the general election on October 6, 2015.[1]
Although Retherford faced no official opposition, Sacha Pettitt ran for Seat A as a certified write-in candidate. Pettitt's name did not appear on the ballot, but she was eligible to win the election.[2]
Elections
2015
Three of the seven seats on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District School Board were up for election on October 6, 2015. All seats on the board of education represent the district at-large.
Incumbents Deborah Retherford and Sarah Welton won re-election to Seats A and B, respectively. Retherford and Welton were formally unopposed but faced two certified write-in candidates in Sacha Pettitt and Michael Coons. Pettitt and Coons did not appear on the ballot but were eligible to win the election.[3] Incumbent Kelsey Trimmer defeated challenger Wade Long for a two-year term representing Seat E. Trimmer was appointed in April 2015 to fill a vacancy left by Tiffany R. Scott, who moved out of the district.[4][1][5]
Results
| Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, Seat A, General Election, 2015 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Deborah Retherford Incumbent |
86.6% | 7,297 |
| Write-in votes | 13.39% | 1,128 |
| Total Votes | 8,425 | |
| Source: Matanuska-Susitna Borough, "Official Borough Election Results", accessed November 12, 2015Write-in vote totals are cumulative for all write-in candidates. | ||
Funding
Retherford reported no contributions or expenditures to the Alaska Public Offices Commission as of October 5, 2015.[6]
Endorsements
Retherford received no official endorsements during the election.
2012
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonpartisan | Deborah Retherford |
44.6% | 4,460 | |
| Nonpartisan | Aimee Kopp | 38.9% | 3,889 | |
| Nonpartisan | Steven Impson | 15.5% | 1,549 | |
| Nonpartisan | Write-in votes | 1% | 99 | |
| Total Votes | 9,997 | |||
| Source: Matanuska-Susitna Borough, "Election Results" accessed September 14, 2015 | ||||
What was at stake?
2015
Election trends
- See also: 2013 school board elections and 2014 school board elections
In 2015, three incumbents ran for the three available seats. Only one seat, Seat E, had a challenger to the incumbent. Seat E was filled by the appointment of Kelsey Trimmer after Tiffany R. Scott resigned in 2015. Trimmer defeated challenger Wade Long for a two-year term. Incumbents Deborah Retherford and Sarah Welton won re-election to Seats A and B, respectively.
Since 2013, the race for school board seats in the district has seen an average of 1.63 candidates per seat. The most contested race in that time period, with four candidates, was for Seat F in 2013. The election for that seat resulted in challenger Donna Dearman beating incumbent Neal Lacy and two other candidates. In 2013, two of the three incumbents running for re-election lost. That trend did not continue in 2014 when the two seats up for election were filled by incumbents who ran unopposed.
Issues in the district
The district worked with borough leadership to oversee the first publicly-financed school in the state when it used a government loan to fund the construction of its Spanish immersion charter school.[7]
Charter school gets new building with unique financing
Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District included six charters schools as of 2015. At that time, five of the six charter schools rented property from private property owners for their facilities. Property owned by the district is exempt from property taxes on land that has a public school on it, while property owned by private landowners does not qualify for the exemption even if a school functions on the property. The charter schools pair rent to their landowners that was going in part to cover the property taxes the owners pay.[8]
The district wanted to try a new approach to help one of its charter schools, Fronteras Spanish Immersion, move to a permanent facility built to educational specifications that would qualify for the property tax exemption. In partnership with the borough, the school applied for a loan from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The $6.9 million loan was approved, and the district broke ground on the new school in 2015.[9]
The USDA director of rural development explained that the loan was the first publicly financed school in the state of Alaska. The borough donated the land used for the new facility to the district and was the primary loan applicant. The school will make the loan payments to the borough. The land is exempt from property taxes and will be owned by the district once the loan is paid in full.[7]
The mayor of the borough, Larry DeVilbis, expressed his approval of the project at the groundbreaking: "Today is an atonement for what I was told was going to be political suicide for vetoing a bond initiative that was going to be put before the voters." DeVilbis vetoed a ballot initiative for a $15 million bond package to fund the building of the school after a campaign promise to keep school bond debt off the ballot for five years.[10]
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Deborah Retherford' 'Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, Alaska
- Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District elections (2015)
- Analysis of incumbency advantage in the 2014 school board elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Matanuska-Susitna Borough, "Final List of Candidates," accessed August 13, 2015
- ↑ Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, "Official Certified Write-In Candidates as of September 29, 2015," accessed October 5, 2015
- ↑ Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, "Official Certified Write-In Candidates as of September 29, 2015," accessed October 5, 2015
- ↑ Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, "School Board," accessed August 13, 2015
- ↑ Matanuska-Susitna Borough, "Election Unofficial Results", accessed October 6, 2015
- ↑ Alaska Public Offices Commission, "Campaign Disclosure Forms," accessed October 5, 2015
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Alaska Public Media, "Wasilla charter school forges a new financial path to fruition," August 24, 2015
- ↑ The Frontiersman, "Assembly to debate charter school tax exemption," August 17, 2015
- ↑ The Frontiersman, "Assembly approves Fronteras loan," February 16, 2015
- ↑ The Frontiersman, "Uno! Dos! Tres!" August 24, 2015
